“Taken 2,” the ‘Liam Neeson is still a badass, in case you were wondering’-billed sequel, once again topped the North American box office chart this weekend, adding $22.5 million to the till for an $86.8m domestic cume. The revenge pic should easily surpass $100m by the end of next weekend. It probably won’t hit the whopping $145m final figure that its predecessor earned, but it will come close.
Even though they didn’t beat “Taken 2,” there were two successful new releases: Ben Affleck’s Iranian Hostage Crisis thriller “Argo,” which kicked off what should be a long stay in theaters with $20.1m, and the R-rated horror flick “Sinister,” which pulled in a suprisingly solid $18.3m, multiplying its $3m production budget several times over.
Fellow newcomers “Here Comes the Boom,” “Seven Psychopaths,” and “Atlas Shrugged: Part II” were not as lucky; all three tanked to varying degrees. The latter film’s performance ($1.7m) was particularly poor given that it barely opened as well as its predecessor, which was booked on less than a third as many screens and had a fraction of the marketing budget.
Check out the full top 10 chart below:
| No. | Title | Weekend | Per Theater Average | Total |
| 1 | “Taken 2” | $22.5M | $6,071 | $86.8M |
| 2 | “Argo” | $20.1M | $6,225 | $20.1M |
| 3 | “Sinister” | $18.3M | $7,222 | $18.3M |
| 4 | “Hotel Transylvania” | $17.3M | $5,126 | $102.2M |
| 5 | “Here Comes the Boom” | $12.0M | $3,981 | $12.0M |
| 6 | “Pitch Perfect” | $9.3M | $3,350 | $36.1M |
| 7 | “Frankenweenie” | $7.0M | $2,334 | $22.0M |
| 8 | “Looper” | $6.3M | $2,418 | $51.4M |
| 9 | “Seven Psychopaths” | $4.3M | $2,889 | $4.3M |
| 10 | “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” | $2.2M | $2,983 | $6.2M |
Source: Box Office Mojo